The ground-breaking avant-garde composer Elliott Carter has died, at the age of 103.

Carter’s music earned him a number of high profile accolades, including two Pulitzer Prizes, even though many listeners struggle with the complexity of his compositions. Carter continued to compose music until very recently, having completed his last piece in August this year. New York Times have reported that he passed away in his Manhattan apartment yesterday (November 5, 2012). He had lived in the same apartment since he and his wife purchased it in 1945.

Such was Carter’s well-earned popularity, that he began to impose rules on the major orchestras that commissioned works from him, For one, he refused to be tied to a deadline, insisting that his work will simply be ready when it is ready. For many years, he also refused to accept commissions from orchestras that had not previously played his music. Although he shunned opera for many years, he wrote his first opera, What Next? at the age of 90. It received its premiere at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, followed by an American premiere at the legendary Carnegie Hall.

Carter married his wife, Helen Frost-Jones, a sculptor and art critic. She passed away in 1998 and he is survived by a son, David and a grandson. Commenting on the complexity of his music, he once commented “it seems to me that if a work has something remarkable to say, then someone who wants to whistle it will find something in it to whistle. But these things are very subjective.” 

Listen to Elliott Carter's A Symphony of Three Orchestras: